Units and Missions

Universal rules Decided

Every unit belongs to a building (Crashed Ship, Depot, Barracks). No unit is controlled directly; tapping one only shows its status and cargo.
Missions are set on the owning building. Basic mission shapes: go to a point, out-and-back, depot A → depot B, gather at a deposit, patrol, escort, attack, recall.
Slots and size: a building provides slot capacity; bigger units take more slots. Players choose between quantity and quality (for example, a 4-slot Barracks with 4 Sword Bots, 2 Sword + 1 Gun, or 2 Gun Bots).
Units cost no resources. They’re limited by slots and by a build/respawn delay.
A destroyed unit rebuilds automatically in its slot after the delay and inherits that slot’s mission.
Delays Tentative: Harvester 30 s (decided for the prototype baseline). Trucks longer (60–90 s suggested). Large vehicles longer still. Combat bots not yet set.

Starting units (Crashed Ship) Decided

The ship starts with one each of three units:

Unit	Role
Scout Drone	Explores
Harvester	Gathers resources
Engineering Crew	Builds

The Scout and Harvester work from the first minute. The Engineering Crew has nothing to build until the first 100 Basalite arrives (about 3:20 in the baseline sim), so for the first few minutes only two things are happening. What the crew does before then is Open (see open-questions.md).

Earlier versions had one drone do both scouting and gathering, or added a separate “mining truck.” The designer rejected an overloaded drone and settled on these three.

Scout Drone Decided

Flies over all terrain. Fast enough that sending it out isn’t a chore.
Missions are always round trips. Range is limited by a round-trip “battery” that recharges at home. Starting range is 150 tiles of flight, so it reaches 75 tiles out, with more range an early upgrade Tentative (tier0-proposals.md).
Starts with simple out-and-back. Waypoints, loops and return-to-home come later. Encourage out-and-back exploring rather than patrols.
Orders queue Tentative: one given while the Scout is away flies after the ones before it.
Can’t be shot down early. Nothing can hit the sky within its starting range, so the first drone can’t be lost.
Relatively low field of view. Radar later outperforms it.
Discovers deposits. Harvesters never wander into unknown deposits on their own.
Investigate Tentative: the crew knows nothing about the planet, so every deposit starts unknown. The Scout flies to a patch and scans it on site, and when the scan finishes the resource is discovered, which is when its story beat plays and explains what it’s good for.
- Harvesters can’t mine an unknown patch.
- Scan time depends on the resource: easier ones are very fast, about 15 s; harder ones take longer, up to about a minute.
- What’s still open is in open question #53.

Harvester Decided

A small, primitive, pickup-sized ground vehicle that combines extraction and transport.

Lives in the Crashed Ship (the original) or a Depot (shares Depot slots with trucks and crews).
Unloads only at its home building. Never at another Depot.
Slow to drive, quick to collect. Distance is the main penalty, which is what makes logistics desirable.
Works a 2×2 footprint on a deposit, moving around inside it as an animation. That area is dedicated to it.
- Only one Harvester collects in a footprint at a time. Others assigned to it wait.
- Irregular deposit edges mean a footprint may cover 4, 3, 2 or 1 resource cells.
- Collection rate scales linearly with productive cells: 4/3/2/1 cells = 1.0/0.75/0.5/0.25 per second.
- The route-assignment UI shows footprints already taken and how many cells each would cover. Duplicates are allowed but cost efficiency.
- Drills use the same footprint and edge logic.
Small noise each, additive in groups. Still far quieter than drills.
Never obsolete: a low-noise extraction option for the whole game (remote deposits near hives, quick bootstrap, emergency recovery).

Missions:

Mission	Behavior
Gather	Go to a designated deposit or hive, fill up, return home, repeat
Patrol & Collect	Patrol an area (for example, outside your walls) and pick up only dropped Evolite from dead aliens; go home when full. Never starts mining.

Clearing a hive is a Gather mission on Live Evolite (see noise-and-aliens.md).

Baseline numbers are in balance-and-simulations.md.

Engineering Crew Decided

Builds construction ghosts, repairs, and rebuilds ruins.
Draws materials from its home network and goes back to restock.
Flies over buildings, walls and units, like the Scout, so construction never needs roads Tentative (first-test.md).
Lives in the ship at first, then in Depots. Whether dedicated crew facilities exist later is Open.
Idle at the start. The ship holds no Basalite, so the crew waits until the Harvester has brought back enough for the first Depot (about 3:20). Filling that gap is Open.
After building the first Depot at the chosen base site, the ship’s crew can be reassigned there Tentative.
See logistics.md for remote construction.

Logistics Truck Decided

Small pickup-style trucks (not semis). Faster than Harvesters (baseline 3 tiles/s versus 1).
2 cargo slots, one stack of one resource each Tentative.
Runs depot ↔ depot/outpost routes. Can’t be controlled directly.
Unlocked with Logistics research in Tier 1.

Military robots Decided

Robots, not people. That fits the no-population rule and explains free respawns.

Unit	Tier	Slots	Weapon	Notes
Sword Bot	0 (when aliens are first seen)	1	Melee swords, no guns	Wimpy; patrols, escorts Harvesters, fights weak aliens
Gun Bot	1 (Evolite research)	2	Ranged guns	Larger and tougher; defends industry, attacks hives

Barracks missions: patrol an area, defend a structure, escort Harvesters, attack a target (for example a hive), recall.
Mixed groups are just a UI convenience: pick any mix of a Barracks’ robots and give them the same mission. Each robot uses its own AI. No formations or squad mechanics Decided.
Combat is automatic once a mission is set.
Do Gun Bots use ammunition? Open (see combat-and-defense.md).
Small bots stay useful after Gun Bots arrive: they cover wider patrols and intercept small threats.

Later unit progression Tentative

Military coordination: rally points, wait for full strength (launch an attack only once the whole force has assembled, including respawned units), squad leaders, multi-Barracks coordinated assaults.
Automatic patrols that respond to radar contacts. Automatic Barracks dispatch.
Bigger trucks, trains, faster crews, specialized scavengers.
Tier 3 “automated” trucks and crews are existing units gaining new behaviors, not new unit types.